Tipping the Velvet (2 page)

cleverly of all, he secured a one-week contract with a real When one looked from the gallery to the circle and the celebrity, from London: Gully Sutherland — one of the best stalls, one saw only the flap of hats and programmes. The comic singers in the business, and a guaranteed hall-filler flapping didn't stop when the orchestra struck up its few even in the hottest of hot Kentish summers.

bars of overture and the house lights dimmed; but it slowed Alice and I visited the Palace on the very first night of a little, and people sat up rather straighter in their seats. The Gully Sutherland's week. By this time we had an hush of fatigue became a silence of expectation.

arrangement with the lady in the ticket-booth: we gave her The Palace was an old-fashioned music hall and, like many a nod and a smile as we arrived, then sauntered past her such places in the 1880s, still employed a chairman. This, window and chose any seat in the hall beyond that we of course, was Tricky himself: he sat at a table between the fancied. Usually, this was somewhere in the gallery. I could stalls and the orchestra and introduced the acts, and called 9

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for order if the crowd became too rowdy, and led us in The next act was a comedian, the next a mentalist - a lady toasts to the Queen. He had a top-hat and a gavel - I have in evening dress and gloves, who stood blindfolded upon never seen a chairman without a gavel - and a mug of the stage while her husband moved among the audience porter. On his table stood a candle: this was kept lit for as with a slate, inviting people to write numbers and names long as there were artistes upon the stage, but it was upon it with a piece of chalk, for her to guess.

extinguished for the interval, and at the show's close.

'Imagine the number floating through the air in flames of Tricky was a plain-faced man with a very handsome voice -

scarlet,' said the man impressively, 'and searing its way into a voice like the sound of a clarinet, at once liquid and my wife's brain, through her brow.' We frowned and penetrating, and lovely to listen to. On the night of squinted at the stage, and the lady staggered a little, and Sutherland's first performance he welcomed us to his show raised her hands to her temples.

and promised us an evening's entertainment we would The Power," she said, 'it is very strong tonight. Ah, I feel it never forget. Had we lungs? he asked. We must be prepared burning!'

to use them! Had we feet, and hands? We must make ready After this there was an acrobatic troupe - three men in to stamp, and clap! Had we sides? They would be split!

spangles who turned somersaults through hoops, and stood Tears? We would shed buckets of them! Eyes?

on one another's shoulders. At the climax of their act they

'Stretch 'em, now, in wonder! Orchestra, please. Limes-formed a kind of human loop, and rolled about the stage to men, if you will.' He struck the table with his gavel - clack!-

a tune from the orchestra. We clapped at that; but it was too so that the candle-flame dipped. 'I give you, the marvellous, hot for acrobatics, and there was a general shuffling and the musical, the very, very merry, Merry" - he struck the whispering throughout this act, as boys were sent with table again -'Randalls!'

orders to the bar, and returned with bottles and glasses and The curtain quivered, then rose. There was a seaside mugs that had to be handed, noisily, down the rows, past backdrop to the stage and, upon the boards themselves, real heads and laps and grasping fingers. I glanced at Alice: she sand; and over this strolled four gay figures in holiday gear: had removed her hat and was fanning herself with it, and two ladies - one dark, one fair - with parasols; and two tall her cheeks were very red. I pushed my own little bonnet to gents, one with a ukulele on a strap. They sang 'All the the back of my head, leaned upon the rail before me with Girls are Lovely by the Seaside", very nicely; then the my chin upon my knuckles, and closed my eyes. I heard ukulele player did a solo, and the ladies lifted their skirts Tricky rise and call for silence with his gavel.

for a spot of soft-shoe dancing on the sand. For a first turn,

'Ladies and gentlemen," he cried, 'a little treat for you now.

they were good. We cheered them; and Tricky thanked us A little bit of helegance and top-drawer style. If you've very graciously for our appreciation.

champagne in your glasses' - there was an ironical cheering at this -'raise them now. If you've beer - why, beer's got 11

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bubbles, don't it? Raise that too! Above all, raise your It was the hair, I think, which drew me most. If I had ever voices, as I give to you, direct from the Phoenix Theatre, seen women with hair as short as hers, it was because they Dover, our very own Kentish swell, our diminutive had spent time in hospital or prison; or because they were Faversham masher . . . Miss Kitty' -clack!- 'Butler!'

mad. They could never have looked like Kitty Butler. Her There was a burst of handclapping and a few damp whoops.

hair fitted her head like a little cap that had been sewn, just The orchestra struck up with some jolly number, and I for her, by some nimble-fingered milliner. I would say it heard the creak and whisper of the rising curtain. All was brown; brown, however, is too dull a word for it. It unwillingly I opened my eyes - then I opened them wider, was, rather, the kind of brown you might hear sung about -

and lifted my head. The heat, my weariness, were quite a nut-brown, or a russet. It was almost, perhaps, the colour forgotten. Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a of chocolate - but then chocolate has no lustre, and this hair single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this there shone in the blaze of the limes like taffeta. It curled at her was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! -

temple, slightly, and over her ears; and when she turned her that I had ever seen.

head a little to put her hat back on, I saw a strip of pale Of course, we had had male impersonator turns at the flesh at the nape of her neck where the collar ended and the Palace before; but in 1888, in the provincial halls, the hairline began that - for all the fire of the hot, hot hall -

masher acts were not the things they are today. When Nelly made me shiver.

Power had sung The Last of the Dandies' to us six months She looked, I suppose, like a very pretty boy, for her face before she had worn tights and bullion fringe, just like a was a perfect oval, and her eyes were large and dark at the ballet-girl - only carried a cane and a billycock hat to make lashes, and her lips were rosy and full. Her figure, too, was her boyish. Kitty Butler did not wear tights or spangles. She boy-like and slender - yet rounded, vaguely but was, as Tricky had billed her, a kind of perfect West-End unmistakably, at the bosom, the stomach, and the hips, in a swell. She wore a suit -a handsome gentleman's suit, cut to way no real boy's ever was; and her shoes, I noticed after a her size, and lined at the cuffs and the flaps with flashing moment, had two-inch heels to them. But she strode like a silk. There was a rose in her lapel, and lavender gloves at boy, and stood like one, with her feet far apart and her her pocket. From beneath her waistcoat shone a stiff-hands thrust carelessly into her trouser pockets, and her fronted shirt of snowy white, with a stand-up collar two head at an arrogant angle, at the very front of the stage; and inches high. Around the collar was a white bow-tie; and on when she sang, her voice was a boy's voice - sweet and her head there was a topper. When she took the topper off -

terribly true.

as she did now to salute the audience with a gay 'Hallo!' -

Her effect upon that over-heated hall was wonderful. Like one saw that her hair was perfectly cropped.

me, my neighbours all sat up, and gazed at her with shining eyes. Her songs were all well-chosen ones - things like 13

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'Drink Up, Boys!', and 'Sweethearts and Wives', which the We called for her, but there were no more encores. The likes of G. H. Macdermott had already made famous, and curtain fell, the orchestra played; Tricky struck his gavel with which we could all, in consequence, join in - though it upon his table, blew out his candle, and it was the interval.

was peculiarly thrilling to have them sung to us, not by a I peered, blinking, into the seats below, trying to catch sight gent, but by a girl, in neck-tie and trousers. In between each of the girl who had been thrown the flower. I could not song she addressed herself, in a swaggering, confidential think of anything more wonderful, at that moment, than to tone, to the audience, and exchanged little bits of nonsense receive a rose from Kitty Butler's hand.

with Tricky Reeves at his chairman's table. Her speaking I had gone to the Palace, like everyone else that night, to voice was like her singing one -strong and healthy, and see Gully Sutherland; but when he made his appearance at wonderfully warm upon the ear. Her accent was sometimes last -mopping his brow with a giant spotted handkerchief, music-hall cockney, sometimes theatrical-genteel, complaining about the Canterbury heat and sending the sometimes pure broad Kent.

audience into fits of sweaty laughter with his comical songs Her set lasted no longer than the customary fifteen minutes and his face-pulling -1 found that, after all, I hadn't the or so, but she was cheered and shouted back on to the stage heart for him. I wished only that Miss Butler would stride at the end of that time twice over. Her final song was a upon the stage again, to fix us with her elegant, arrogant gentle one - a ballad about roses and a lost sweetheart. As gaze - to sing to us about champagne, and shouting she sang she removed her hat and held it to her bosom; then

'Hurrah!' at the races. The thought made me restless. At last she pulled the flower from her lapel and placed it against Alice - who was laughing at Gully's grimaces as loudly as her cheek, and seemed to weep a little. The audience, in everybody else - put her mouth to my ear: 'What's up with sympathy, let out one huge collective sigh, and bit their lips you?'

to hear her boyish tones grow suddenly so tender.

'I'm hot,' I said; and then: 'I'm going downstairs.' And while All at once, however, she raised her eyes and gazed at us she sat on for the rest of the turn, I went slowly down to the over her knuckles: we saw that she wasn't'weeping at all, empty lobby - there to stand with my cheek against the cool but smiling - and then, suddenly, winking, hugely and glass of the door, and to sing again, to myself, Miss Butler's roguishly. Very swiftly she stepped once again to the front song, 'Sweethearts and Wives'.

of the stage, and gazed into the stalls for the prettiest girl.

Soon there came the roars and stamps that meant the end of When she found her, she raised her hand and the rose went Gully's set; and after a moment Alice appeared, still fanning flying over the shimmer of the footlights, over the herself with her bonnet, and blowing at the dampened curls orchestra-pit, to land in the pretty girl's lap.

which clung to her pink cheeks. She gave me a wink: 'Let's We went wild for her then. We roared and stamped and she, call on Tony.' I followed her to his little room, and sat and all gallant, raised her hat to us and, waving, took her leave.

idly twisted in the chair behind his desk, while he stood 15

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with his arm about her waist. There was a bit of chat about Plushes. You sit in a box, and make sure the audience gets a Mr Sutherland and his spotted handkerchief; then, 'What look at you: it might give them ideas above their station.'

about that Kitty Butler, eh?' said Tony. 'Ain't she a

'It might give Nancy ideas above her station,' said Alice.

smasher? If she carries on tickling the crowd like she did

'We couldn't have that.' Then she laughed, as Tony tonight, I tell you, Uncle'll be extending her contract till tightened his grip about her waist and leaned to kiss her.

Christmas.'

It would not have been quite the thing, I suppose, for city At that I stopped my twirling. 'She's the best turn I ever girls to go to music halls unchaperoned; but people weren't saw," I said, 'here or anywhere! Tricky would be a fool to so very prim about things like that in Whitstable. Mother let her go: you tell him from me.' Tony laughed, and said he only gave a frown and a mild tut-tut when I spoke, next would be sure to; but as he said it I saw him wink at Alice, day, of returning to the Palace; Alice laughed and declared then let his gaze dally, rather spoonily, over her lovely face.

that I was mad: she wouldn't come with me, she said, to sit I looked away, and sighed, and said quite guilelessly: 'Oh, I all night in the smoke and the heat for the sake of a glimpse do wish that I might see Miss Butler again!'

of a girl in trousers - a girl whose turn we had seen and

'And so you shall,' said Alice, 'on Saturday.' We had all songs we had listened to not four-and-twenty hours before.

planned to come to the Palace - Father, Mother, Davy, Fred, I was shocked by her carelessness, but secretly rather glad everyone - on Saturday night. I plucked at my glove.

at the thought of gazing again at Miss Butler, all alone. I

'I know,' I said. 'But Saturday seems so very far away was also more thrilled than I cared to let on by Tony's Tony laughed again. 'Well, Nance, and who said you had to promise that I might sit in a box. For my trip to the theatre wait so long? You can come tomorrow night if you like -

the night before I had worn a rather ordinary dress; now, and any other night you please, so far as I'm concerned.

however - it had been a slow day in the Parlour, and Father And if there ain't a seat for you in the gallery, why, we'll let us shut the shop at six - I put on my Sunday frock, the put you in a box at the side of the stage, and you can gaze at frock I usually wore to go out walking in with Freddy.

Miss Butler to your heart's content from there!'

Davy whistled when I came down all dressed up; and there He spoke, I'm sure, to impress my sister; but my heart gave were one or two boys who tried to catch my eye all through a strange kind of twist at his words. I said, 'Oh, Tony, do the ride to Canterbury. But I knew myself - for this one you really mean it?'